Negligence behind crane accident, workers say

İZMİR

The Dec. 30 accident that caused the death of six people when the crane that was intended to be raised in the construction of a hotel in the Aegean province of İzmir fell towards the building for an unknown reason happened because the necessary safety precautions were not taken, workers on the construction site have claimed.

Yıldırım Sarı, Fesih Çiftçi, Baykal Gündüz, Aslan Akkaya, Ali Şükrü Duru and Ümit Kara lost their lives when the crane fell on the container used as a worker dormitory in İzmir’s Bornova.

The owner of the construction company, Emrullah Yolçi, construction site chief Muhammet Yolçi, occupational safety officer Fikret Kamil Aydın and the owner of the crane company, İrfan Kasırga, were detained. They were referred to the courthouse and were arrested.

Kenan Sarı, brother of Yıldırım Sarı, who was also in the dormitory at the time of the incident, survived the accident without injury.

Workers on the construction site claimed that they demanded that the containers be moved to another location as the presence of them near the construction site could “threaten their safety.”

“We’ve told the company a thousand times that the rubble was falling every day. They weren’t interested. They just built a roof over our heads,” said Mücahit Çiftçi, one of the injured workers. “It is not a work accident, it is murder,”

Emrah Siner, a relative of Fesih Çiftçi, said Alper Özer, another relative of his, died at this construction site just one month ago.